Idea Ambjent – the theme of the forthcoming PN general convention – is timely and necessary. But the environment is not merely an idea, not just a vision.
It is the place and time of habitation and an expression of the transformation of human existence into human life. The environment is a public good, that is, a resource publicly owned yet subject to private use, within certain parameters.
The protection, the restoration and, most significantly, the cultivation of a profound respect for the environment, therefore, become essential to the establishment of proper human civility. Our very livelihood is challenged and threatened when unsustainable so-called development runs amok, driven too often by greed and short-sightedness. Examples of this are numerous.
In Britain, we have witnessed heated and impassioned debates in and outside Parliament when the built-up area started to approach the eight per cent mark of the total geographical space.
In Malta, we keep coming up with ill-conceived mega projects that devour land, our common wealth, in the name of the blessed investment mantra. Of course, this co-owned wealth has several components: our atmosphere, our water table, our coastline, our beautiful harbours and bays, our fertile valleys and rugged tracts of garigue. In essence, however, they are all gifts of nature. Whether it is convenient or not for politicians and economists to highlight this fact is another matter altogether.
Our future is built on the environment and, indeed, is the environment. What is the value of promoting economic growth for its own sake, and regarding it as some absolute measure of success, if it is incapable of properly safeguarding and restoring the environment that supports and enriches each person’s most cherished humanity? After all, the very term ‘economy’ literally expresses the notion of the proper and measured management of the household – the environment therefore, material and otherwise, which one inhabits and whereby one is nourished.
It is high time that we move away from measuring our level of well-being simply by the amount of material and energy used up by society. It has become clear that this strategy is unsustainable,that it is doing irreversible harm. That is why we need another plan, another vision of economic growth, another point of view. The new point of view is based on the environment as public or common wealth.
Every challenge to the environment becomes a challenge to the livelihood of each one of us
From this perspective, how could one ever describe as a yardstick of well-being and how could one ever justify the appropriation of public land to be exploited as a private good for private satisfaction or, at the limit, private rent-seeking, as in the case of the Armier shacks; the wholesale assault on the remaining countryside for building projects, particularly those spaces protected by the ODZ label and the illegal extraction of water from the islands’ natural underground water table for private irrigation purposes or, to add insult to injury, to be resold to the parties that owned it in the first place.
That is robbing me of my wealth today to extort payment for the same wealth from me tomorrow.
In this light, the very notion of environment merges with life itself. Every challenge to its existence becomes a challenge to the livelihood of each one of us.
Malta’s history has been one of colonisation for 4,000 years or so, which makes its independent existence as a nation look like a mere blip. How ought we to protect and nourish this, our acquired freedom, our environment, from the dangers of becoming ruled by the greedy and well-oiled government propaganda machine that stupefies our awareness and robs us of the very basis of all that gives us a common humanity, as opposed to being merely a collection of subjects.
Our safeguarding Idea Ambjent then translates into our maintaining a hold on Idea Ħelsien. From thinking that we are merely Maltese, our contribution to humanity may be rooted in the conviction that we are human universally and proud to protect and restore our environment locally, even with the bona fide help of all others who (like us) happen to have come to live legitimately in this archipelago.
Quoting Martin Adams, my greatest hope is that, one day, each human being – every one of us – will be able to participate in a society that is inherently just and that also considers the well-being of future generations. To achieve this, we have to work together in appreciation of our differences and on behalf of our common humanity.
This hopeful approach will only work if we act before it is too late.
Here then is the contemporary challenge facing our generation as we respond to the renewed at-tempt at robbing us, the common man, of the common good, of an inherited environment that is, in truth, none other than our freedom and independence.
Charlot Cassar is a founderof Front Ħarsien ODZ.